What are the small business trends of 2015 that entrepreneurs need to know about? In this post, we’ve picked five of the biggest changes and issues affecting the marketplace for small business owners.
- 3D Printers and Small Batch Manufacturing– 3D printing, or “additive manufacturing,” has been talked about a lot over the last few years. But 2015 looks to be the year that the technology is truly adopted on a large scale by small businesses. As 3D printers become less expensive and easier to use, smaller companies will be able to use them to produce small batch manufacturing orders, while also lowering their overall production costs.
- Social Media Sales – Social media has been firmly established as a platform for businesses to communicate with their customers and build an online community for several years now. But now that Twitter and Facebook have announced the adding of “buy” buttons on their posts, social media is about to become even more important for many businesses. Once customers are able to purchase items from a company without ever leaving the social media platform of their choice, small businesses are sure to start using Facebook and other social media sites as e-shops for their products.
- A Big Year for Big Data – Many small business owners assume that “big data” is just for big businesses that have the budget and the personnel to crunch all the numbers and come up with actionable data. But analytics is becoming more and more important to calculating business moves, and as the data is further processed into recognizable trends, more small business owners will be increasing their analytics capabilities in 2015.
- Alternative Capital – Over the last few years, alternative methods of raising capital like peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding have appeared. Expect many enterprising small businesses to tap into these non-traditional methods of raising money in order to fund necessary growth in 2015.
- Content Will (Still) Be King – As the internet continues to let companies target customers directly, the quality of the content that businesses send to their would-be clients will matter more than ever. Small businesses in 2015 will be partnering with writers, editors, and other content creators to improve the quality of their online content.
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